


look around, look around (at how lucky we are to be alive right now)

by JuniorWoofles



Series: Femslash February [7]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Femslash February, Hospitals, Light Angst, Post episode: s04e12 The Fugitive, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 03:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9638099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniorWoofles/pseuds/JuniorWoofles
Summary: They're breaking apart looking at her broken body and they need her to wake up. They all need her in their lives; their sister, their friend, their love.





	

Jake’s heart stops when Amy calls him in tears. Anytime that Amy was even on the verge of a break down was enough to send him into a cross between full panic and protection modes. This was different though. This was Amy sobbing down the line, gasping out information in the spaces between. This was Amy making Jake’s heart stop, not because he couldn’t believe how much he loved her but because he didn’t want to believe what she was telling him.

When Jake was younger he had been a gawky thing and never really fitted in with the coolest kids even if he had tried. Gina was effortlessly in a whole league of her own. She didn’t need to try to fit in with the cool kids, the cool kids had to try to fit in with Gina. She was an enigma shrouded in opinions but she let Jake in

When Jake was younger he realised he didn’t need to fit in with the cool kids when the coolest kid wanted to fit in with him.

Jake and Gina were as close as friends could be. They hung out together watching movies on cable and slurping up fizzy sodas a kind woman gave them; a woman shared not by blood but by bond. By the time they had been friends for a year they were as close as brother and sister;  they found a home with the other. They were inseparable, they even got sick together. Gina was the little sister Jake never knew he wanted or needed until she came crashing into his life.

Now Jake was older and the love of his life (if that wasn’t a sure sign of his maturity) was calling him and breaking his heart. Amy was trying to cradle the pieces as they fell, he could vaguely hear her trying through the ringing in his skull, but Amy wasn’t here with him. Amy was a hospital waiting for someone to deliver news to her.

Jake was older and thought he was wiser for it. He was managing his debt (though Gina's help), doing well in his job (with Amy potentially to blame) and about to move in with his dream girl (that one was all Amy). But for all that he had to be considered an adult he had never felt as helpless as he did in that moment. He was a child again, lost without Gina dragging him along to where he needed to be. He was a child and he needed to be comforted by one of the strongest adults he knows.

Amy flies into his arms when he gets to the hospital. She buries her head in the crook of his shoulder and for a second Jake marvels at how easily and naturally it fits there. Then the breath he’s holding comes out in a tattered reply and he’s crying with his face pressed into her hair but she’s not saying anything. She’s holding him as much as he’s holding her and they stay like that until the world has stop spinning and the pounding in his skull recedes to a dull throb again.

Somehow they manage to move to the hard hospital seats. Amy’s still curled up into him and Jake runs his hand through her hair, comforting both of them with the repetitive motions. Amy’s ear is pressed over Jake’s heart and she’s using it to calm herself down. Amy calming down is helping Jake to calm down and he focuses on Amy’s breathing.

They’re calmer by the time the doctors come out. Charles is sitting next to them blaming himself. Amy’s holding his hand, reaching out across Jake’s thigh to do so. They all feel connected, huddled close together in relative silence on uncomfortable chairs. 

Amy lifts her head up when the doctors approach. She sits up and Jake automatically puts his arm around her pulling her closer to him. She sinks into his side and squeezes Charles’ hand right back when the doctor starts to speak.

He starts by saying Gina’s in a stable condition and after that no words compute. Gina’s going to be just fine. She’s Gina Linetti and if a damn bus couldn’t stop her no hospital would succeed in its place.

After a bout of medical mumbo that none of them are truly listening to he admits them access to Gina’s room. He warns them that if she’s not currently sleeping that she needs to be before shutting the door softly. The  three of them stand there watching the beeps of the monitors keeping their friend alive. Charles and Jake may be refusing to let of go of Amy’s hands but she’s relying on them just as much. On her right Jack stands stricken as he looks at the unstoppable Gina lie motionless on a hospital bed. Amy can feel the tears flowing down her cheeks and on her left Charles is chewing on his lip and trying to focus on only Gina, trying to ignore the beeping of the machinery around her. They can see her face as Gina but the bandages around her are so far from the eccentric energy she has that no one wants to look at them if they can help it.

Jake looks at her face and tries to picture her dancing in Nana’s apartment and scolding him when he couldn’t keep up with her beat. He pictures them giggling together as they stay up all night. He tries to picture the day he graduated from the police academy and walking over to hug his mom and Gina. He sees her sitting up in the bed and asking them what they’re gawking at, before she’d request fancier bedsheets and a Beyonce album.

Amy look at Gina and misses her warm. She misses the way Gina would critique everything in her apartment from her pillows to her dresses. She wants Gina to speak out in the brass way of hers, not caring what does she steps on in the process. Amy misses it. Misses the way she kept looking her in small spaces and forced her to conquer her fear as best as she could. She wishes Gina would wake up and tell her to stop fearing that she wouldn’t be the same Gina.

Charles looks at her face and knows that for every time he's seen Gina be open and vulnerable that she had never been vulnerable like this. This wasn’t the public face of Gina or Jake’s Gina or Charles’ Gina he can see. This was Gina at her most open. She was unprotected and Charles wanted to step up as a big brother and protect her. He hadn’t protected her from the bus and he couldn’t protect her from revealing her vulnerability to the world.

The door behind them flew open with a thud and they turned round as best as they could while forming a protective barrier around Gina. Then Rosa came flying in.

Her hair and her whole expression had a look of wilderness as she tried to look past them to see Gina in her bed. She ran past them and crowded next to Gina, gently cradling a heavily bandaged hand in her own. She leant down to kiss it and when she rose the tears fell down on it.

The macawber silence was broken only to be replace with a stunned silence. No one said a word. They didn’t know where to start. Amy didn’t want to be insensitive. Charles didn’t know why this didn’t hurt him as it once did, save for the setting. Jake didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it sooner. It was his partner and his sister.

They were supposed to all be great detectives and none of them had seen what was right in front of them.

Jake thought of his graduation, Rose by his side as he enveloped his mother in a hug. When he let go he had to wait to hug Gina as she was hugging Rosa. It didn’t look as awkward as it should have been considering it was basically an embrace between strangers. Yet Rosa was relaxing into it; the same Rose who hated hugs. When they left Rosa came with them and they had all celebrated together.

Charles realised that for all his bumbling attempts to date Rosa the one person who gave him actual advice that worked was Gina. Go all out with old movie tickets or keep it simple with a date night in with pizza, she had said. Gina was an expert in everything, why not in the dating habits of Rosa as well. Rosa may be opinionated but Gina was worse and Gina knew Rosa’s opinion when the rest of them barely knew her facts.

Amy saw them together, at her desk looking down on her, in her home criticising her clothes and her cooking. They finished each other’s thoughts in the next remark and they made it seem natural to do so. They rubbed up against each other and ribbed each other: dinner parties and illnesses, schemes and conferences. She remembered Rosa kicking her desk drawer shut but Amy had still seen the corner of a flyer for a dance company sitting at the top.

Charles let go of Amy’s hand and walked over to Rosa like he was approaching a skittish deer. He walked up behind her chair and placed one hand on her shoulder and stopped there. Rosa didn't flinch or react to it but she seemed to breathe a little easier.

So they stayed there in their uninterrupted bubble waiting for a Gina Linetti shaped interruption to come. Not only did they all love Gina but they all knew Gina loved them all back in her own way, and they needed her to wake up and tell them again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Despite how angsty this was compared to what I usually write this was fun to do.  
> And let's be real a bus isn't going to be able to stop Gina. She's unstoppable.


End file.
